Silicon Valley’s chronic shortage of affordable housing, a problem with dire business and ethical implications, offers the region’s chief executives an opportunity to create a legacy beyond their share prices.

Why should CEOs care about affordable housing? It’s about creating a region that attracts and retains talent. If you can’t see that the brightest people will migrate to a place where they can aspire to buying a home, you’re ignoring an element of human nature.

This year, the average price of a Silicon Valley home topped

$1 million, according to MLSListings.com. At the same time, the funds available locally for affordable housing have plummeted 64 percent in the past five years, according to a white paper issued by the Cities Association of Santa Clara County and Housing Trust Silicon Valley.

The depth of the problem offers Silicon Valley CEOs an opportunity to transform the region for the better, leaving behind something more than enriched shareholders. Visionary CEOs will see that investing to solve this problem now will not only yield more riches for shareholders later, but can fix an executive’s place in history.

Some companies in Silicon Valley acknowledge the problem. They have directed resources at the issue.

But a powerful CEO must step up and create a mechanism to fund solutions to this crisis.

The good news: They won’t be starting from scratch.

A little over three months ago, a CEO approached Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino about one aspect of the affordable housing crisis, homelessness, and urged greater focus on that problem.

That conversation, in conjunction with work already under way by Silicon Valley groups including Housing Trust Silicon Valley, will gain steam in the new year, Guardino said. Meetings are set for January and February to scope the problem and discuss measurable ways to address it.

Funding the needed $222 million a year in Santa Clara County will be staggeringly difficult. And addressing the affordable housing crunch requires political will. All the money in the world can’t win over folks who can’t abide living by poor people.

Once the problem is defined and a path forward is charted, a leader must emerge. Solving the problem will require a CEO to put his or her face and reputation out front, establishing a new cultural norm that prioritizes equitable housing policies.

We take it for granted that CEOs don’t become — or remain — leaders by focusing on things outside their core business. And Silicon Valley’s culture of competition reinforces that value.

But the CEO who doesn’t see that fixing the affordable housing crisis will improve business conditions — while creating a better society — is missing an opportunity to lead.